In certain environments, users need to access huge amounts of information from multiple different sources, and then be able to analyze the information using one or more forms of a sorted list presented in a paginated display. What's more, the information from multiple different sources may need to be filtered and/or formatted before being presented to the requestor. In some circumstances, one or more of the multiple different sources may comprise streaming information.
Legacy techniques rely on accessing the multiple sources with foreknowledge of the extent of the data, and/or with foreknowledge of the persistence of the source information. Unfortunately, certain modern sources (e.g., live feeds) may be of indeterminate length, and worse, certain sources (e.g., streaming sources) may be accessible at one moment in time, and inaccessible at another moment in time, and then again accessible at a third moment in time. Still worse, legacy techniques access, sort, merge, and present such information from multiple sources even if the information might not be needed by the user. These legacy techniques often result in wasteful consumption of computing resources.
What are needed are high-performance techniques for accessing and managing iterative accesses to information to be sorted, paginated, and presented on user displays.